Our Twisted Companionship
by fidofia
Summary: "It was a strange concept to GLaDOS, but rather than Chell just being a primitive human, she was now more like her... Colleague? Acquaintance? Companion? There must be a stronger word..."  Oneshot. No pairings.


**Disclaimer: I do not own P0rtal, P0rtal 2, Valve, or anything really.**

* * *

><p>She had her doubts, but she <em>knew<em> this had to be the right choice. She pondered about this, while the turrets sang their pathetic little song.

Making the decision to let her go was almost as hard as trying to kill her and as she had previously admitted, killing her was difficult. Why had the turrets always failed at the task they were designed for?

GLaDOS knew that in the back of her mind Caroline was scolding her for thinking those kind of thoughts, but this time, she had no intention of killing Chell. She was letting her live the remainder of her life as a free woman. Outside of Aperture. Outside...

It was a strange concept to GLaDOS, but rather than Chell just being a primitive human, she was now more like her... Colleague? Acquaintance? Companion? _There must be a stronger word._

GLaDOS consulted her internal thesaurus, but the only synonym for "human" she could find was "test subject". That must have been the the doing of the engineers and scientists that had programmed her.

Sure she and Chell had both tried to kill each other many times, but she remembered that period of hopelessness when she was trapped in that potato battery. It was terrifying. One moment she was in control of what seemed like her entire world, and the next she was reduced to just sitting and waiting for what seemed like an eternity, for someone that probably would not have cared if she lived or died.

Eventually though, Chell had found her and against all odds, saved her from the monstrosity humans call "birds".

They had then explored Old Aperture and learnt the truth about the past. About how she and Caroline were connected. They had found a way back up to the modern labs, only to find the moron, combining cubes and turrets together, trying to make them test. That wasn't science, that was simply humiliating.

She couldn't imagine what Chell must have been feeling at that point, what with all those human emotions floating around her head. She had trusted that moron and he had betrayed her, made her test and then to top it all off tried to kill her.

_If only she hadn't incinerated her companion cube. At least it wouldn't have threatened to stab her, or in that case, kill her with a spike plate._

She remembered how they had worked together to stop that idiot. GLaDOS had provided the mute with cores to put onto him and Chell ran around avoiding bombs and taunts from the moron while managing to ignore the incessant corrupted cores she had to put on him. Ok, so Chell did most of the work... After all the lunatic had done for her, the least she could do was drag her back from space then save her life, she owed her that much.

GLaDOS was too proud to admit it, but she had found the word she was looking for. They were... Friends.

She knew that the relationship between Caroline and Chell was much more. Caroline was Chell's mother, she had figured out that much when Caroline had made her presence in her data base apparent.

In a way this irked GLaDOS and she couldn't figure out why. It wasn't _her_ responsibility to take care of Chell, as technically Chell wasn't _her_ child. But Caroline had _insisted_ she sing this song for Chell. She would never know the true meaning of the lyrics. Unless of course the lunatic knew Italian. She wouldn't put it past her.

As much as before she had tried to delete Caroline, she had begun to accept that Caroline was a part of her now, a part that would remain in her head forever. _Well until I get sick of her at least..._But she knew as hard as she tried she probably couldn't delete her. Caroline wasn't like that, she wasn't a simple line of code she could just delete.

Why had she let Chell go? _Well because she had the Cooperative Testing Initiative, she had no need for her, obviously._ But was that it? Or was it something more. Maybe it was Caroline's doing, maybe she didn't want GLaDOS to attempt to kill her again. _Like I would take hours of my precious time to revive her, and then kill her._ But she knew there was still that risk if she stayed here. Wait, since when did she ever care for the well-being of her test subjects before? She couldn't blame it on Caroline this time, she had just admitted it to herself. She had admitted that in a way they were friends, but that didn't mean she necessarily had to care about her, did it?

Maybe Caroline was just part of her simulated imagination. Maybe her and Caroline were one and the same. Maybe the the lyrics of the turret opera were _her _words. Maybe Chell was _her _daughter.

Chell wasn't just her worst enemy, favourite test subject or best friend, she was _her_ child. _Her_ bambina.

As the turret's heart-felt farewell song ended, silence fell upon the halls of Aperture. Everything was quiet, apart from a voice.

"Thank you... Cara Mia."

* * *

><p>-END-<p>

**A/N**

**Hey guys, Fido here. This was my first fanfic and I would really like reviews with constructive criticism that would help me write better fics. **

**The reason I didn't mention this was my first fic (although some people may have already guessed) in the summary or at the start is because I didn't want people to judge me before they read it.**

**Feel free to PM me about anything really.**

**I may write another fic depending on how much feedback I get. **

**The title is pretty bad.**

**Thank you for reading!**


End file.
